Daniel Radcliffe was trapped on the set of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by… a whoopee pillow!
Did Daniel Radcliffe have sonic flatulence in the middle of a take? No way ! In fact, he was made a joke that (kindly) ridiculed him on the set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
A scene is to be filmed as many of the Hogwarts children are lying in the common room as the Dementors threaten to enter the school. The sequence begins as Professors Snape and Dumbledore are at the back of the room and are gradually approaching Harry, who is pretending to be asleep and listening to them.
Except that on the set, however, nothing goes as planned. Indeed, part of the team decided to make a little joke to the interpreter of the little wizard, Daniel Radcliffe. On the initiative of Michael Gambon (then brand new Dumbledore following the death of Richard Harris after The Chamber of Secrets), a whoopee cushion is placed without his knowledge under the bunk of the young actor.
You can see the result below:
The actors embodying the children lie down, everyone is very good while Gambon and Alan Rickman, the interpreter of Snape, walk in the room playing their lines. When a first flatulence sounds, everyone tries to keep their seriousness, but at the second or third, it is no longer possible and the scene is interrupted by laughter!
And that’s how the filming of the first “dark” part of the Harry Potter saga turned out in an atmosphere of pure relaxation. At the time of its release, the tone of Prisoner of Azkaban was grossing over $780 million, which was $85 million less than its predecessor, The Chamber of Secrets. The Goblet of Fire will raise the bar by collecting 886 million and the following opuses will never drop below the 900 million mark.